Modern electronics, such as smart phones, personal digital assistants, location based services devices, enterprise class servers, or enterprise class storage arrays, are packing more integrated circuits into an ever shrinking physical space with expectations for decreasing cost. Contemporary electronics expose integrated circuits and packages to more demanding and sometimes new environmental conditions, such as cold, heat, humidity, and everyday handling requiring integrated circuit packages to provide robust structures.
Electronic appliances also provide flexibility provide modular support for consumers to customize features important to them. This flexibility requires robust, durable, and ergonomically usable form factors of these modules. These modules may provide various functions such as providing connectivity for wireless access to storing digital pictures.
Numerous technologies have been developed to meet these requirements. Some of the research and development strategies focus on new technologies while others focus on improving the existing and mature technologies. Research and development in the existing technologies may take a myriad of different directions.
One proven way to reduce cost is to use mature package technologies with existing manufacturing methods and equipments. Existing packaging technologies struggle to cost effectively meet the ever demanding reliability, durability, and usability requirements of today's integrated circuits and packages.
Most integrated circuit devices use molded compound as an epoxy mold compound (EMC) for protecting package. The encapsulation formed from the molding compound and other packaging structures tend to increase the size or format factor of the overall package. Other usability structures add more complexity and may increase the size or decrease the durability of the overall package structure. These additional structures may also limit how many modules may be simultaneously used within the physical constraints available in the electronic appliance.
Thus, a need still remains for an integrated circuit package system providing low cost manufacturing, improved usability, and improved durability for the integrated circuit package. In view of the ever-increasing need to save costs and improve efficiencies, it is more and more critical that answers be found to these problems.
Solutions to these problems have been long sought but prior developments have not taught or suggested any solutions and, thus, solutions to these problems have long eluded those skilled in the art.